Since my job allows me to have four day weeks, we took advantage of the Friday by going to the Austin Zoo. I wanted to make sure to get Evelyn out of the hotel, since she’s been stuck inside all week. (This first week I took the car, but starting next week she might start dropping me off.)

The Zoo is an interesting place, because it only accepts animals without a home. It takes them from other zoos (that don’t have room), shelters, circuses, labs, and so on. A pretty cool concept, I think. They have most of the usual stuff you’d expect in a zoo, except for really big animals (ex. giraffe, elephant).

One of the things I really liked was that there are a lot of “petting zoo” portions. So, you can buy a bag of food and feed goats, pigs, deer, and so on. It’s really a great place for kids since you can get close up to the animals. (We were the only ones there without kids. Lots of “soccer” moms and dads.)

It also has a short (15) minute train ride though some of the grounds. You really don’t see many animals on the ride, but you do get to see some pretty hill country scenery.

It’s a small zoo, but the concept is cool, and the animals seemed to be pretty happy. It is nice to see animals saved from bad homes and/or destruction.

Probably the saddest part of the zoo was the area with the small monkeys (can’t remember their proper name) that were used in labs. The poor things are afraid to climb in trees and they walk around all hunched over. They are over 30 years old and spent the first 25 of those in lab cages. It really makes you think about what we do to animals. On the bright side, they are living their retirement in a nice place with lots of toys. (It looked like a kids playroom.)